Gulf of Mexico Shrimp Industry Engagement Webinar #1: TED Design to Reduce Juvenile Sea Turtle Bycatch

NOAA Fisheries staff restoring resources impacted by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, are hosting webinars for the shrimp trawl industry to learn about a project advancing turtle excluder devices (TEDs) to exclude small sea turtles and reduce bycatch. The purpose is to design and test TEDs that exclude small sea turtles and reduce bycatch. This project is not intended to introduce new or change existing regulations.

Funded by Deepwater Horizon settlement funds, the voluntary “Reducing Juvenile Sea Turtle Bycatch through Development of Reduced Bar Spacing in Turtle Excluder Devices project” started in 2021.

The project’s objectives include:

• Developing and evaluating reduced bar spacing TEDs designed to exclude small sea turtles in the shrimp otter trawl fishery. 
• Testing and certifying small bar spacing TED prototypes through the NOAA Fisheries small turtle testing protocol.
• Conducting independent and dependent bycatch reduction and target-catch retention testing. 
• Determining bycatch reduction rates and corresponding restoration potential for sea turtles for each TED prototype produced.

This webinar will inform industry members about how, when, and where the key project components will take place, and how they can get engaged. The project team also presented project information at recent Southern Shrimp Alliance meetings in February and March 2022.

This project was selected by the Deepwater Horizon Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group as part of a 2019 Open Ocean Restoration Plan. The plan included a total of 18 projects, investing $226 million to help restore fish, sea turtles, marine mammals and deep-sea coral habitat injured by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.